There are more and more news items about police officers using tasers (mostly from the US). For those who aren't familiar with those; a taser is an electrical device capable of administering jolts of electricity, in magnitudes of 50.000 volts. Contact is made through pins on the device itself or prongs with wires, shot from the taser. Since the current is low, the device is deemed to be a safe means of stopping a suspect, without being lethal.
Now, as a guy who knows a thing or two about electrics, that's kind of hard to accept. If you ever accidentally came in contact with high voltages (such as electrified fences, naked mains wires, flyback circuits from CRT-TV's) and read about it, you'll know that electric currents can induce all sorts of medical problems. Especially your heart can get seriously confused when exposed to
electric shocks, and under the right circumstances, 300mA can be enough to kill you. You can power 30 LED's on 10mA each with that kind of current.
So why are tasers deemed safe? I don't know; perhaps those boffins figure that skin resistance is high enough to dilute the shock somewhat, but that still doesn't account for the hooks that are shot into you.
Now, the main reason that got me thinking about this matter is
this clip, which shows a police officer from asking a guy for his driver's license to tasering him to the ground in just 45 seconds, while the guy didn't really do anything.
The police officer was suspended for only 3 days and his defence statement mentioned that he didn't really took care of himself by not having breakfast, and becoming agitated from malnutrition.
If I would know that I get agitated from lack of nutrition, I'd go and do something about it!
I wonder what would have happened if the guy ended up sharing the same fate as that man from Poland who wanted to go to his mom in Canada,
but didn't manage to get through Customs alive.
I hope the next taser incident involves some big shot artist or something, so that the powers that be will finally manage to retract their collective heads out of their rear orifice long enough to put and end to this.
Somehow I think Hell will freeze over first.
K.